نقش استفاده از فیس بوک در واسطه گری رابطه بین نشخوار فکری و تنظیم پس از فروپاشی روابط

Given the popularity of social networking sites, it is important to examine the impact of rumination while examining the rich content available, particularly after a stressful interpersonal event. This pilot study examined how individual differences in rumination are related to Facebook use following a breakup. Findings indicate that trait rumination was associated with the tendency to experience maladaptive thoughts while examining an ex’s profile, as well as difficulties in adjustment following the breakup. Rumination on Facebook and the importance of Facebook in one’s social world mediated the relation between trait rumination and subsequent perceived adjustment. Thus, for high ruminators, placing a high reliance on Facebook and ruminating while on the site may hold particularly negative emotional consequences following a stressor.

Theories of emotion regulation (ER) posit that how people regulate or respond to negative emotions is crucial for their adjustment to critical life events (e.g., Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). The tendency to use strategies which fail to down-regulate negative emotions following onset, such as rumination, may lead to prolonged negative affect (John & Gross, 2004), resulting in the development of psychological disorders. Rumination has been defined as the process of “repetitively and passively focusing on symptoms of distress and the possible causes and consequences of these symptoms” (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). The Response Styles Theory posits that rumination may prolong and exacerbate distress in response to stressful events, increasing the likelihood that initial depressive symptoms may turn into episodes of major depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008). Roberts, Gilboa, and Gotlib (1998) observed elevated levels of rumination not only in individuals with current dysphoria, but also in those with previous depressive episodes, regardless of current symptoms. These findings suggest that the tendency to ruminate may be a stable risk factor that increases vulnerability to emotional disorders, rather than being merely a symptom of depression. Rumination is frequently described as an automatic process that is difficult to control and is triggered by cues that remind the person of the negative event. While current research primarily focuses on the role of face-to-face interactions in triggering rumination, for those prone to engaging in this maladaptive form of ER, social networking sites (SNS) may serve as an additional means of eliciting and/or prolonging rumination. As such, individuals with a tendency to respond to negative events with rumination may do so in response to both offline, as well as online cues. Facebook, in particular, may play an important role in providing ripe material for rumination, thereby inhibiting recovery from negative life events. Several factors distinguish Facebook, including its prevalent use and easy accessibility of multimedia material (Valkenburg, 2011). It provides a means of obtaining rich, immediate information about one’s social network without requiring face-to-face contact and in some cases, without active searching. Importantly, Facebook may provide additional reminders of a negative life event that one may not otherwise have had access to, holding significant implications for subsequent adjustment. Recent work indicates that social surveillance is the second most commonly reported motive for using Facebook (Joinson, 2008), and users spend more time observing than posting information on the site (Pempek, Yermolayeva, & Calvert, 2009). Thus, the tendency to use Facebook to gather information about one’s social world, in combination with the vast amount of readily available information, suggest that for individuals prone to ruminate, Facebook use may be particularly detrimental following a negative event. With the increasingly prominent role that online social interaction, specifically SNS sites, play in people’s everyday lives, it is crucial to consider their effects on psychological well-being. Overall, the body of literature examining the relation between SNS and psychological well-being presents mixed findings (e.g., Ellison et al., 2007 and Sheldon, 2008). Whereas some work suggests positive outcomes, including increased socialization (O’Keeffe, Clarke-Pearson, and Council on Communications and Media, 2011) and decreased depression (Kang, 2007 and Morgan and Cotton, 2003), others identify more negative consequences such as the reduction of face-to-face socialization (Kraut et al., 1998) and increased depression (Xiaoming, 2005). Most of these studies have focused primarily on time spent on Facebook in relation to psychological outcomes. However, individual differences in processing of Facebook material and regulation of the ensuing affect may hold important consequences for subsequent mental health. While Davila et al. (2012) found that the quality of one’s Facebook interactions (i.e., positive or negative) was related to one’s depressive symptoms, more work is needed to examine what factors potentially impact the quality of a user’s interactions. Several factors, both internal and external, may play a role in determining this, such as the tendency to ruminate on material viewed and the importance of Facebook in one’s social world. Locatelli, Kluwe, and Bryant (2012) found that the tendency to ruminate on Facebook information mediated the impact of positive and negative status updates on well-being more so than the status updates themselves mediating the impact of rumination on well-being. These findings suggest that rumination on Facebook material play a key role in the subsequent emotional consequences, above and beyond the actual content viewed. Additional work by Feinstein et al. (2013) found that rumination mediated the relation between negative social comparison on Facebook and depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that emotion regulation processes may be one mechanism through which social networking use may impact mental health outcomes. Given the negative impact of rumination and the increasing prevalence of Facebook in users’ everyday lives, it is important to examine the role of Facebook in impacting adjustment, particularly for high trait ruminators. Given the tendency for rumination to be triggered by internal and external reminders of one’s distress, we propose that high trait ruminators will be more active Facebook users driven by an increased need to learn more about their social sphere. Bevan, Pfyl, and Barclay (2012), for instance, found that individuals with a greater tendency to use Facebook to connect with existing social contacts, as well as those un-friended by someone they knew, displayed greater rumination and negative emotional responses. Accordingly, we predict that high trait ruminators will not only exhibit more rumination while using Facebook, but will also spend more time on Facebook, spend more time actively using the site, and show greater engagement in Facebook interactions (e.g., chatting, updating status), leading Facebook to play a larger role in their social lives. As such, current literature also suggests that the importance of Facebook in one’s social world is an important factor to consider when understanding the relation between trait rumination, Facebook use, and subsequent psychological outcomes. Several studies examining the importance of SNS in one’s social world have found that users who are more dependent on online communication for their social connections may experience more negative consequences. LaRose, Eastin, and Gregg (2001), for example, found that users who felt that their online connections were their only source of social support were more likely to report increased levels of loneliness and depression. Further work indicates that adolescents who are socially successful offline (e.g., extraverted individuals) and merely use online communication to increase the quality of existing friendships benefit more than users who have less fulfilling relationships offline and use social networking sites as a means to create new connections ( Valkenburg & Peter, 2009). Together, these studies suggest that the importance of Facebook in one’s social world (relative to their “offline” world) may have implications for emotional well-being and may act as a mediator between the stable tendency to ruminate (e.g., trait rumination) and emotional outcomes following a life stressor.

Given that users spend more time observing than posting, this has important implications for the effects of interpretation, current and resultant mood state, emotion regulation, social comparison, and self-esteem (Pempek et al., 2009). However, it is important to interpret these results in the context of the small sample size of the current study. These findings present preliminary conclusions which may serve as a starting block for future work in this area. Future research should continue to explore individual differences in how social networking sites are used, how information is interpreted, and how the resultant emotions are regulated and their relation to subsequent effects on mental health. The cross-sectional correlational nature this study also limits our ability to make causal claims. Future studies should strive to examine the impact of Facebook use on adjustment and well-being following a negative life event using longitudinal designs and/or experience sampling studies to better examine the causal relations between Facebook use, rumination, and psychological outcomes. Additionally, our primary outcome variable, or measure of adjustment, served as a retrospective measure of participants’ perceptions of their adjustment to the stressor. Future studies would benefit from obtaining more objective measures of psychological adjustment closer to the stressor in order to reduce mood and memory biases. Finally, to reduce heterogeneity, a relationship break-up was used as the primary stressor in this sample. Going forward, it would be important to examine differences in the impact of other interpersonal, as well as non-interpersonal stressor using a larger sample size. This study provides a starting ground for examining the impact of social networking sites on mental health, but there are still many factors and complex relationships to explore. Future findings may shed light on the role of new media in fostering and hindering adjustment following a negative life event and hold valuable research and clinical implications for the use of social networking sites to regulate emotions.